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    First Look: September 9

    First Look

    09 Sep 2014

    Can I Give You Some Advice?

    David Garvin and Joshua Margolis offer up advice on advice—specifically, how to gather it, use it, and give it. "A Note on Seeking, Receiving, and Giving Advice" concludes with "recommendations for practice, listing a number of pitfalls to avoid when seeking, receiving, and giving advice as well as several guidelines and best practices," the authors report.

    Why Us Consumers Love Debt

    Compared with citizens of many other counties, United States residents have historically been heavy borrowers. Why? In the new book Consumer Lending in France and America, Gunnar Trumbull compares borrowing habits in America with the frugal French.

    How Expectations Produce Dangerous Behavior

    In the working paper Dangerous Expectations: Breaking Rules to Resolve Cognitive Dissonance, researchers find a link between our expectation of the difficulty of performing a task and willingness to break the rules. Research was conducted by Francesca Gino and colleagues.

    —Sean Silverthorne
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    Publications

    • September 2014
    • Cambridge University Press

    Consumer Lending in France and America: Credit and Welfare

    By: Trumbull, Gunnar

    Abstract—Why did America embrace consumer credit over the course of the twentieth century, when most other countries did not? How did American policy makers by the late twentieth century come to believe that more credit would make even poor families better off? This book traces the historical emergence of modern consumer lending in America and France. If Americans were profligate in their borrowing, the French were correspondingly frugal. Comparison of the two countries reveals that America's love affair with credit was not primarily the consequence of its culture of consumption, as many writers have observed, nor directly a consequence of its less generous welfare state. It emerged instead from evolving coalitions between fledgling consumer lenders seeking to make their business socially acceptable and a range of non-governmental groups working to promote public welfare, labor, and minority rights. In France, where a similar coalition did not emerge, consumer credit continued to be perceived as economically regressive and socially risky.

    Publisher's link: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/political-economy/consumer-lending-france-and-america-credit-and-welfare

    • September 2014
    • Academy of Management Annals

    Advancing Research on Hybrid Organizing-Insights from the Study of Social Enterprises

    By: Battilana, Julie, and Matthew Lee

    Abstract—Hybrid organizations that combine multiple organizational forms deviate from socially legitimate templates for organizing and thus experience unique organizing challenges. In this paper, we introduce and develop the concept of hybrid organizing, which we define as the activities, structures, processes, and meanings by which organizations make sense of and combine multiple organizational forms. We propose that social enterprises that combine the organizational forms of both business and charity at their cores are an ideal type of hybrid organization, making social enterprise an attractive setting to study hybrid organizing. Based on a literature review of organizational research on social enterprise and on our own research in this domain, we develop five dimensions of hybrid organizing and related opportunities for future research. We conclude by discussing how insights from the study of hybrid organizing in social enterprises may contribute to organization theory.

    Publisher's link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19416520.2014.893615

     

    Working Papers

    Dangerous Expectations: Breaking Rules to Resolve Cognitive Dissonance

    By: Moore, Celia, S. Wiley Wakeman, and Francesca Gino

    Abstract—When entering task performance contexts we generally have expectations about both the task and how well we will perform on it. When those expectations go unmet, we experience psychological discomfort (cognitive dissonance), which we are then motivated to resolve. Prior research on expectancy disconfirmation in task performance contexts has focused on the dysfunctional consequences of disconfirming low performance expectations (i.e., stereotype threat). In this paper we focus on the dysfunctional consequences of disconfirming high performance expectations. In three studies, we find that individuals are more likely to break rules if they have been led to expect that achieving high levels of performance will be easy rather than difficult, even if breaking rules means behaving unethically. We show that this willingness to break rules is not due to differences in legitimate performance as a function of how easy people expect the task to be, or whether their expectations are set explicitly (by referring to others' performance) or implicitly (as implied by their own prior performance). Instead, using a misattribution paradigm, we show that cognitive dissonance triggered by unmet expectations drives our effects.

    Download working paper: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2486576

     

    Cases & Course Materials

    • Harvard Business School Case 314-071

    A Note on Seeking, Receiving, and Giving Advice

    This note examines the processes of seeking, receiving, and giving advice by drawing on both academic research and the lessons of skilled practitioners. It begins with a discussion of the potential benefits and costs of advice seeking and advice giving. The note then defines and distinguishes four related activities: advising, counseling, coaching, and mentoring. Next, it describes the primary stages or steps in the advising process; each stage is examined from the perspective of both advice seekers and advice givers. The note concludes with recommendations for practice, listing a number of pitfalls to avoid when seeking, receiving, and giving advice as well as several guidelines and best practices.

    Purchase this case:
    http://hbr.org/product/a-note-on-seeking-receiving-and-giving-advice/an/314071-PDF-ENG

    • Harvard Business School Case 514-107

    Vaxess Technologies, Inc.

    In February 2014, Michael Schrader, chief executive of Vaxess Technologies, Inc., was assessing the startup health care company's 2014 marketing plan. On December 31, 2013, Vaxess had obtained an exclusive license to a series of patents for a silk protein technology that, when added to vaccines, reduced or removed the need for refrigeration between manufacturing and delivery to the end patient. Schrader and his colleagues had to decide on which vaccines to focus and whether and how to target the drug companies that manufactured the vaccines or the quasi-government organizations (such as UNICEF and PAHO) and nongovernment organizations (such as GAVI) that purchased large quantities of vaccines for the developing world.

    Purchase this case:
    http://hbr.org/product/vaxess-technologies-inc/an/514107-PDF-ENG

    • Harvard Business School Case 714-034

    Sasol: U.S. Growth Program

    Sasol, the world's largest producer of synthetic oil from coal and gas, has announced plans to build a huge Catalytic cracker and gas-to-liquids plant in Lake Charles, Louisiana. This $21 billion venture will be the single largest foreign direct investment in U.S. manufacturing history. The plants, on 1,600 acres adjacent to the company's existing cracker, will liquefy 98,000 barrels daily, converting ethane to ethylene and then into various specialty chemicals. The entire project depends on low gas prices engendered by the shale revolution and relatively high oil prices. The risks are copious, as is the promise.

    Purchase this case:
    http://hbr.org/product/sasol-u-s-growth-program/an/714034-PDF-ENG

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